Benthic macroinvertebrate communities change along a karstic barrage-lake system

Le résumé fourni par la source

Barrage-lake systems are a rare natural phenomenon with specific ecological characteristics that are greatly affected by tufa formation. Our main goal was to investigate benthic macroinvertebrate communities and their longitudinal variations within the lakes arranged in cascades in the Dinaric karst hydrosystem. Each lake within the Plitvice Lakes system studied presented with a distinct community, showing the effects of the barrage-lake system on the macroinvertebrates in these lakes. We observed a downstream decrease in taxa richness, abundance and Shannon diversity index along the longitudinal profile of the studied barrage-lake system. This pattern is most probably a result of decreased organic matter and increased tufa deposition. Overall, our results suggest that the hydrosystem studied represents a sequence of sediment sinks in which lakes retain and accumulate organic matter and fauna. Therefore, each lake acts as a filtering screen and consequently appears to be a small ecosystem. Each lake has its own community characteristics, regardless of the fact that water flows from one lake to the next, connecting them and creating very similar abiotic conditions in each lake along the system.

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